Check out Pinduli through this read aloud link. Pinduli, a young striped hyena, is hurt by the unkind words of Dog, Lion, and Zebra, but her clever trick in return promotes her clan's survival and spreads harmony throughout the savannah. It's a perfect story for exploring African music and the reasons we dance. Students learned shapes, symmetry, asymmetry, and how to describe characters with this erudite little hyena. Have fun dancing to the African Music by clicking here! Remember we dance for many reasons. One of them is telling a story.

Homes come in all shapes and sizes. Carson Ellis writes about the fictional and nonfictional homes we know in this fun story. Students worked on making connections this week. What are the best things about living in the country? What are the best things about living in the city? What would it be like to live in a shoe? Can you create moves to the vocabulary words this week? Lair, Hollow, Duchess, Babushka, or Blacksmith? How does home make you feel? Movement and Dance can be used to help us FEEL the peaceful feelings of home. So can music! Check out this famous song and feel the peace of HOME.

Sometimes the first day of school can feel like a ZOO! Reagan students identified their favorite school activities and transformed them into movement phrases. Their movements created a beginning, middle, and end. Click here to make your own or to ask a student to show you their dance piece.

The warm-up for Movement Moments includes a weekly Brain Balance exercise. These exercises require students to stay persistent in the activity. They are progressive and get easier with time. To see a Brain Balance in action just ask your student to point at their thumb.

The Dancing Wheels Company from Cleveland, Ohio performed for the Elementary Schools in Archer Auditorium. The students learned the dance Chicken Lips. Here's a link to the song. If you play it.... they will dance!

The story Crow Boy by Taro Yashima provided students an opportunity to practice developing characters. In the beginning of the story the little boy in the story is shy. In the middle of the story he meets a good teacher. In the end of the story the little boy is confident. What changed? Here's the song the students at Edison used to create a movement piece about the Crow Boy.

Hi, Mrs. Jarvis!

Just wanted to let you know what a nice lead-in it was to have the Beginning-Middle-End of Crow Boy front-loaded through movement! They were really paying attention to how the movements they'd learned fit into the plot line as we read the story.

~ Jodi White, Edison